ABSTRACT
Rhetorical scholarship typically conceptualizes an event of dissention as a break in a dominant discourse. More recent scholarship drawing upon rhetorical ecologies and new materialisms suggests, however, that analyses of events of dissention would benefit from greater consideration of bodies and environments. Things can also initiate “fissures of unreason” through their material presences and encounters with their physical dynamics, un/healthful effects, or felt forces. An analysis of the 2014 Lion Rock pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong encourages detailed thinking about how material capacities enable protest rhetorics. Ultimately, I argue that the event at Lion Rock is best characterized as a theatrical event of dissention, which demonstrates the integral role of the material in bringing about “unruly rhetorics.”
KEYWORDS:
Notes
1 “Chronology: Timeline of 156 years of British Colonial Rule,” Reuters, June 27, 2007, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-anniversary-history/chronology-timeline-of-156-years-of-british-rule-in-hong-kong-idUSSP27479920070627.
2 “Hong Kong's Legal System,” The Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, last modified April 8, 2020, https://www.legalhub.gov.hk/eng/hkls.html.
3 Benjamin Haas, “Hong Kong Elects a New Chief Executive: Here's What You Need to Know,” The Guardian, March 21, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/22/hong-kong-chief-executive-election-what-you-need-to-know.
4 Tania Branigan and Jonathan Kaiman, “Tens of Thousands Join Pro-Democracy Protest in Hong Kong,” The Guardian, September 28, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/28/hong-kong-occupy-central-teargas-police-electoral-limits.
5 Hui Yew-Foong, “The Umbrella Movement: Ethnographic Explorations of Communal Re-spatialization,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 20, no. 2 (2017): 146–61, https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877916683822.
6 Tania Branigan, “Joshua Wong, The Student Who Risked the Wrath of Beijing: ‘It's About Turning the Impossible Into the Possible,’” The Guardian, May 14, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/14/joshua-wong-the-student-who-risked-the-wrath-of-beijing-its-about-turning-the-impossible-into-the-possible; see also James Griffiths, “Joshua Wong: Hong Kong's Democracy Fighter Gets Netflix Treatment,” CNN, March 24, 2017, https://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/20/asia/joshua-wong-netflix-hong-kong-china/index.html.
7 “Meet ‘Umbrella Man,’ The Symbol of Hong Kong's Protest Movement,” Special Broadcasting Service, October 7, 2014, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/meet-umbrella-man-the-symbol-of-hong-kong-s-protest-movement.
8 During the revision of this manuscript, a new protest movement was sparked in Hong Kong. It remains too early to speak of the means or outcomes; however, I stress the importance of Lion Rock in the 2014 Umbrella Movement and, in turn, note that the political efforts of that year are background needed for grasping current events.
9 See Emma Graham-Harrison, “Leung Chun-ying: The Unprincipled Wolf of Hong Kong or Beijing's Cipher?” The Guardian, September 30, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/30/chief-executive-leung-chun-ying-unprincipled-wolf-hong-kong-or-beijing-cipher. Also see David R. Gruber, “A Beijing Wolf in Hong Kong: Lufsig and Imagining Communities of Political Resistance to Chinese Unification,” in Imagining China: Rhetorics of Nationalism in an Age of Globalization, eds. Stephen J. Harnett, Lisa B. Kernanen, and Donovan Conley (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017), 371–94.
10 See Agence France-Presse, “CY Leung: ‘Democracy Would See Poorer People Dominate Hong Kong Vote,’” South China Morning Post, October 21, 2014, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1621103/cy-leung-democracy-would-see-poor-people-dominate-hong-kong-vote.
11 Simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China; thus, the banner's inscription in traditional characters was itself a statement, situating it as being from/of Hong Kong.
12 The spelling of “Spidie” here matches the local English news reporting.
13 Clifford Lo, Peter So, and Emily Tsang, “Pro-Democracy Banner Hung from Lion Rock Has Officials Scrambling,” South China Morning Post, October 23, 2014, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1622971/pro-democracy-banner-hung-lion-rock-has-officials-scrambling.
14 Lo, So, and Tang, “Pro-Democracy,” 1.
15 Agence-France Presse, “CY Leung,” 1.
16 “Massive Banner on Top of Lion Rock Mountain Declares ‘I Want Real Universal Suffrage,’” Coconuts Hong Kong, October 23, 2014, https://coconuts.co/hongkong/news/massive-banner-top-lion-rock-mountain-declares-i-want-real-universal-suffrage/.
17 Laurel Chor, “Group Claims Responsibility for Lion Rock Banner and Releases Epic Behind-the-scenes Video,” Coconuts Hong Kong, October 24, 2014, https://coconuts.co/hongkong/news/group-claims-responsibility-lion-rock-banner-and-releases-epic-behind-scenes-video/.
18 See “Lion Rock Banner Memes,” Hong Wrong Blog, 2/2, October 28, 2014, http://hongwrong.com/tag/video-2/page/2/.
19 Yuen Chan, “The New Lion Rock Spirit — How a Banner on a Hillside Redefined the Hong Kong Dream,” Huffington Post, December 6, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-new-lion-rock-spirit-_b_6345212?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGuEY7YS0-d-EdWwoptZpA2ISlfldDTxqhoGLzB-bKy8D42rFJb8BCkC6ixJ6g4qgTbxrtiXqIuS8Xck7dtVJQi4ao2LF9u38AZSrh4zBAr1aZfA65wK_sQXBpGDEStjAifdUXLI6JP6hElf-j_c8F1DhANhK3hrWtIS4-dROUEc.
20 For a discussion of kairos as ambient, see Thomas Rickert, “In the House of Doing: Rhetoric and the Kairos of Ambience,” JAC 24, no. 4 (2004): 904, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20866663.
21 See Jonathan Alexander, Susan C. Jarratt, and Nancy Welsh, eds., Unruly Rhetorics: Protest, Persuasion, and Publics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018).
22 Kendall R. Phillips, “The Event of Dissension: Reconsidering the Possibility for Dissent,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 61, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2015.994899. For the content of the quotation, see also Robert L. Ivie, “Toward a Humanizing Style of Democratic Dissent,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11, no. 3 (2008): 455, https://doi.org/10.1353/rap.0.0061.
23 Phillips, “The Event,” 61.
24 Phillips, “The Event,” 62.
25 Phillips, “The Event,” 63.
26 Phillips, “The Event,” 63.
27 Phillips, “The Event,” 64.
28 Jenny Edbauer, “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2005): 5–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/02773940509391320.
29 For discussion, see Thomas Rickert, Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetorical Being (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), xii.
30 Jack Seltzer, “Habeas Corpus: An Introduction,” in Rhetorical Bodies, eds., Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 11.
31 Kevin Michael DeLuca, “Unruly Arguments: The Body Rhetoric of Earth First!, Act Up, and Queer Nation,” Argumentation and Advocacy 36, no. 1 (1999): 9, https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.1999.11951634.
32 DeLuca, “Unruly,” 10–11.
33 Brett Lunceford, Naked Politics: Nudity, Political Action, and the Rhetoric of the Body (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2012), 1.
34 Lunceford, Naked Politics, 2.
35 Lunceford, Naked Politics, 3–4.
36 Kristin Marie Bivens and Kristi Cole, “The Grotesque Protest in Social Media as Embodied, Political Rhetoric,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 42, no. 1 (2017): 21, https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859917735650.
37 Bivens and Cole, “The Grotesque,” 21.
38 Karma R. Chávez, “The Body: An Abstract and Actual Rhetorical Concept,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2018): 242, https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2015.1049823.
39 Chávez, “The Body,” 247.
40 Quintilian, “Institutio Oratoria. Books I and II,” in Quintilian on the Subject of Speaking and Writing, eds. James J. Murphy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 23–24.
41 Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007), 5.
42 Pezzullo, Toxic, 8.
43 Bishnupriya Dutt, “Performing Resistance with Maya Rao: Trauma and Protest in India,” Contemporary Theatre Review 25, no. 3 (2015): 371–85, https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2015.1049823.
44 Christine Hauser, “A Handmaiden's Tale of Protest,” The New York Times, June 30, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/us/handmaids-protests-abortion.html.
45 The statement recalls Hariman and Lucaties’ discussion of “iconic images,” namely, those “widely recognized and remembered” (27). See: Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
46 For more discussion on how ambience is local and able to serve as the capacitation for numerous rhetorics, see Rickert, “In the House of Doing,” 904. Also see Nathan Stormer, “Rhetoric's Diverse Materiality: Polythetic Ontology and Genealogy,” Review of Communication 16, no. 4 (2016): 299–316, https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2016.1207359.
47 William C. Trapani and Chandra A. Maldonado, “Kairos: On the Limits to Our (Rhetorical) Situation,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2018): 278, https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2018.1454211. Italics added.
48 Pickering presents the idea of ontological theater in the final chapter of his book on cybernetics. See Andrew Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
49 Jim Davis, “Disrupting the Quotidian: Hoaxes, Fires, and Non-Theatrical Performance in Nineteenth-Century London,” New Theater Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2013): 3–4, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266464X13000018.
50 Brian C.H. Fong, “Hong Kong is at the Forefront of China's Influences,” East Asia Forum. August 10, 2018, https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/08/10/hong-kong-is-at-the-forefront-of-chinas-influences/; Haas, Ryan, “Why now? Understanding Beijing's New Assertiveness in Hong Kong,” Brookings. July 17, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/07/17/why-now-understanding-beijings-new-assertiveness-in-hong-kong/.
51 S. Scott Graham, “Object-Oriented Ontology's Binary Duplication and the Promise of Thing-Oriented Ontologies,” in Rhetoric Through Everyday Things, eds., Scot Barnett and Casey Boyle (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 2016), 121.
52 Stormer, “Rhetoric's Diverse,” 304.
53 See Nathan Stormer and Bridie McGreavy, “Thinking Ecologically About Rhetoric's Ontology: Capacity, Vulnerability, and Resilience,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 50, no. 1 (2017): 3, 10.5325/philrhet.50.1.0001.
54 Nathan Stormer, “Articulation: A Working Paper on Rhetoric and Taxis,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90, no. 3 (2004): 262–63, https://doi-org/10.1080/0033563042000255516.
55 Brian Cook, “Kowloon City: A Brief History,” Gwulo – Old Hong Kong, May 5, 2014. https://gwulo.com/node/19851.
56 Elizabeth Sinn, “Kowloon – The ‘Unwalled’ City,” Interflow 50 (1987): 7.
57 Sum Lok-kei, “How the Dark Legacy of the Kowloon Walled City Lives on in Modern-Day Hong Kong,” South China Morning Post, March 23, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/community/article/2138468/how-dark-legacy-kowloon-walled-city-lives-modern-day-hong.
58 Chan, “The New Lion,” para. 8.
59 Chan, “The New Lion,” para. 9.
60 For images from the TV show, see “Below Lion Rock (1972-)”, IMDB, accessed December 10, 2018, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6654108/mediaviewer/rm1178367488.
61 See Lo, So, and Tsang, “Pro-Democracy Banner.”
62 See “Hong Kong Protestors Reach New Heights with Democracy Banner on Lion Rock,” Reuters, October 23, 2014.
63 Rachel Blundy, “Lion Rock Spirit Still Casting its Spell on Hong Kong,” South China Morning Post, April 22, 2017, para 2.
64 For more information on housing conditions in Kowloon, see Benny Lam, “Boxed in: Life inside Hong Kong's ‘Coffin Cubicles’ – In Pictures,” The Guardian, June 7, 2017.
65 See Didi Kristen Tatlow, “A Banner on a Hong Kong Landmark Speaks of Democracy and Identity,” The New York Times, Blog, October 23, 2014.
66 The observation is not to deploy a chicken-egg argument between discourse and materiality but to assert the co-constitutive power of materiality.
67 Lo, So, and Tsang, “Pro-Democracy Banner.”
68 See “Beyond,” Warner Music, YouTube video, June 29, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SMDsOYCasc.
69 Note that gender cannot of course be assigned here, but the male pronoun is adopted to connote the Spiderman costume.
70 Chan, “New Lion,” para. 21.
71 Chan, “New Lion,” para. 22.
72 “Up On the Lion Rock,” Lion Rock, Hong Kong Spidie, YouTube video, October 22, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gnLAeuRy_k.
73 See “Stand in the Form of a Crouching Lion,” Art Institute of Chicago, accessed December 1, 2018, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/80898/stand-in-the-form-of-a-crouching-lion.
74 See Blundy, “Lion Rock”; Chan, “The New Lion.”
75 Karen Cheung, “Lion Rock Banner Activists Will Not Be Prosecuted, Says Government,” Hong Kong Free Press, September 22, 2015, https://hongkongfp.com/2015/09/22/lion-rock-banner-activists-will-not-be-prosecuted-says-government/.
76 See David L. Wallace and Helen Rothschild Ewald, Mutuality in the Rhetoric and Composition Classroom (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2000); Eric Leake, “‘Should You Encounter’ The Social Conditions of Empathy,” POROI 14, no. 1 (2018): 1, https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1265.
77 Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).
78 Blundy, “Lion Rock,” para. 3.
79 John D. Wong, “Chapter 6: Between Two Episodes of Social Unrest Below Lion Rock: From the 1967 Riots to the 2014 Umbrella Movement,” in Civil Unrest and Governance in Hong Kong: Law and Order from Civil and Cultural Perspectives, eds. Michael H.K. Ng and John D. Wong (New York: Routledge, 2017), 106.
80 Leake, “‘Should You Encounter,’”1.